


A group project gone horribly wrong

by Thornrose270



Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: Alternate Universe, Danny is a literal Genius, Enemies to Friends, Gen, Jazz Fenton is a good sister, Not Beta Read, in a lot of cases, she cares
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-18
Updated: 2021-01-21
Packaged: 2021-03-09 20:01:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27611794
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thornrose270/pseuds/Thornrose270
Summary: It's the first group project of the year and Valerie is paired with Danny Fenton. gross.at least his house is cool, Val hears they have a cool Lab in the basement, so at least this trip won't be a total waste.AU where Val is the Halfa hero instead of Danny!she's not very happy about that.
Relationships: Danny Fenton & Jazz Fenton, Danny Fenton & Valerie Gray
Comments: 13
Kudos: 16





	1. The beginning (Super original I know)

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to my new fic!   
> I don't know why this is here, I was making a list of AUs for other reasons and this halfa Valerie one wouldn't leave me alone, so I might as well write it out and show you guys so I have people to talk to about it lol.
> 
> have fun!

“I’m serious Valerie! We’re not allowed down there when no one’s home!

“Like you’re going to stop me? And speaking of, if your parents wanted to stop YOU, they could have just locked the door.” Valerie said, already three steps down the eerie metal staircase leading to the Fenton’s basement lab. She was only in the creepy house to begin with because of that stupid group project. Seriously who assigns a group project two weeks into the school year? ridiculous. Though if Val had her way, they would never have group projects to begin with. She was at Fenton’s house because there was a significantly lower chance of being caught with the loser if he didn’t go to her house. And besides, the Fentons were inventors. That was kinda cool, not that she’d ever admit it to the rest of the A listers.

She could feel the waves of anxiety rolling off the kid behind her as she continued down the stairs. She heard him mumble “I’m getting in so much trouble for this” before the telltale thumps of his footsteps followed her down.

The lab was amazing, a scientist's dream, Kwan would be so stoked to be down here. She looked around in awe, eyes pausing on everything she saw, until they finally caught on the massive tunnel dug into the back wall.

“What is that?” She said, voice quieter than she meant it to be.

“Oh that.” Fenton said, shifting from foot to foot. “That’s the Ghost Portal.”

“Ghost portal?” She questioned.

“Yeah, it was supposed to be a window into the afterlife or something, a way for my parents to observe ghosts.” He mumbled, avoiding her gaze. “Can we go back up and actually work? You’ve seen the lab now.”

“No way, I’m not done.” He let out a pathetic whine at her words. “The portal, does it work?”

He snorted. “Not a chance. Ghosts don’t exist so there’s no way to see them.”

“Shame.” She said, and she meant it. An actual portal to the other side would have been cool as frick. She began walking toward the tunnel.

“Wait, what’re you doing??” Fenton said, clearly panicking.

“Checking it out, duh.” She replied, moving closer.

“You can’t go in there! It’s dangerous!”

“Again, like you could stop me.”

“At least put on some hazmat!”

“Not a chance loser. Which I will be if I wear one of those.” She was at the mouth of the tunnel. She could hear Fenton beginning to hyperventilate behind her. She felt a little bad about making him panic this much, but when was she going to get a chance like this again? Never, that’s when. 

She felt a tingle dance along her skin when she entered the strange device. She stared at the wiring and paneling on the inside. Despite not seeing a light source, she could see everything inside perfectly, like the walls themselves were glowing. She looked over her shoulder and threw Fenton a smirk. She could see him glancing between her and the stairs, like he was considering making a break for it. She had a small laugh at his expense before taking another step, placing her fully inside the machine.

Her fatal mistake was looking at the ceiling instead of her feet. The ceiling was more interesting, ok? It had more complex wiring and prettier designs. They obviously hadn’t spent as much time making the floor look nice. Especially since they had left large cables trailing all over it. She had honestly gotten lucky, going as far as she did without tripping. Or, maybe not so lucky after all.

Deep in the belly of the beast, she tripped. Right over one of the large cables on the floor. Thankfully, she caught herself on a protrusion on the wall, immediately after though, it disappeared, like it had sunk into the wall. Gosh, Valerie hoped she didn’t break anything.

“Oh my gosh are you ok?!?” She heard Fenton’s voice echo through the tunnel.

“Yeah yeah, I’m just i’m just fi-” She cut herself off, the tunnel used to be quiet. It wasn’t so quiet anymore. She started to shake as dread welled up in her gut, and light grew in her vision.

“Valerie get OUT OF THERE! VALERIE!” Fenton shrieked, it would have been funny if she had heard it.

But she hadn’t heard it.

She had been too busy screaming herself to notice.

Every nerve was on fire, every piece of her body screaming just as much as her vocal cords. She couldn’t feel anything except pain, could barely think.

She did think some things however.

She thought about how Fenton was right, they should never have come down here.

She thought about her dad, and how devastated and alone he was going to be, because there was no way she was surviving this.

She thought about the A listers, mourning their friend, and then bitterly thought of them moving on just a week or so later.

She thought about all of the things she had left to do, all of the things now out of reach.

She had wanted to be a cop, like her mom.

She had wanted to be a mom, too.

Gone.

All because of one mistake.

Just because she hadn’t listened to a loser.

Gosh she was so stupid. Why didn’t she heed the warnings of someone who knew this stuff so much better than she did?

She thought all of these things in the space of a few seconds, and then nothing at all. After that all she knew was pain.

But then

She heard a voice

She didn’t know what it said, or who’s voice it was, but she yearned to know, to know anything except pain. She reached out with a hand that she was sure should have been vaporized by now, and grasped  _ something _ . All at once she felt a new pain as she crashed to the ground, more aware than she had been in what felt like a lifetime.

She heard a voice, another one this time. It was calling her name. It was Fenton’s voice, guiding her to the exit, guiding her away from the pain. She crawled with every ounce of strength she possessed, which didn’t feel like much at the moment, and emerged from the pain, and the light.

She saw Fenton’s tear streaked face as he looked at her with wide, terrified eyes. He called her name again, but she was already unconscious.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello!
> 
> This is a thing I made!
> 
> enjoy I guess
> 
> if that's possible lol

Danny had already been nervous, he was alone with an A lister after all! But then she had wanted to go downstairs, and his anxiety had mounted. There was nothing he could do to stop her after all, as she had said, so all he could do was follow. At least if he was there he could stop her from getting into too much mischief, right? Wrong. Oh so very wrong.

He couldn’t stop her

He wished he had been stronger, put his foot down _ , anything _ to keep her from going in there. She would have hated him for life, but it would have been worth it. She would be ok.

Because right now she clearly wasn’t.

The machine had powered up with her inside, and he had listened when his parents had told him how much electricity that thing had running through it. She couldn’t survive that.

He had heard her blood curdling shrieks, the most awful sound he had ever heard and he wanted it to stop. Until it did, and then he would have given anything to hear it again, to know that she was still alive, even if he knew that his flicker of hope was futile. He was absolutely horrified, and couldn’t accept it. Not right now. He started calling her name, over and over and over again, as if that would bring her back.

And then it did.

A gray blue hand clawed its way out of the portal, followed by another, followed by a head of curly white hair. The glowing girl crawled out of the swirling vortex, one small movement at a time. Danny should have helped, but he was paralyzed. Because there was only one thing that she could be.

He was looking at the ghost of Valerie Gray.

She crawled up next to him, and he called her name again, finally snapping out of his shock. He whispered her name over and over as he lifted her feverish ghost into his lap. Her eyes were closed, but he could still see their intense glow when he closed his eyes.

They were such a haunting color of red.

“Valerie, I’m so sorry.” He whispered, tears falling onto her blue face. Just then, a searing light overloaded his vision, he cried out and jerked back, shielding his eyes. When the light faded, he looked down at the source, the girl still lying in his lap. Only now, unlike before, her chest rose and fell softly. Her colors had gone back to normal. She wasn’t glowing.

He let out a choked laugh full of desperate hope. She was alive! He didn’t know how, by all accounts she should have been dead, heck, a few seconds ago she  _ was _ dead. He was so confused. Happy, unbelievably happy, but confused.

She groaned and curled into a ball in his lap. Oh crud, he should probably get her off his lap before she woke up, if he didn’t then HE would be the dead one. He looked around desperately for anything he could substitute for a pillow. He came up empty.

He gave a panicked chuckle before glancing back down at Valerie. There were pillows upstairs. But to get her there, he would need to carry her.

She was going to kill him for this.

He lifted her mostly still form into his arms and began the journey upstairs. He set her down on the couch and pulled a blanket over her. All he could do now was wait.

He wrung his hands and glanced around the room what must have been a thousand times. He took out his phone once or twice but couldn’t concentrate on the screen.

“Wha happen-?” Danny could have sung with joy hearing those slurred words. She really was ok! An actual miracle.

“The portal tuned on. You were inside.” he said, walking over to her place on the couch. She squinted up at him. She tried to sit up, but groaned and fell back onto the pillows he had given her. He made to help, but hesitated, not sure if she would want his help.

She opened her eyes fully, staring up at him, confused. He gulped. He really didn’t want to explain the matter further. The entire thing had been playing on loop in his head since it happened, he didn’t want to voice it. Not any more than he already had with those two short sentences. Then, as if she had only just processed his words, her eyes widened in horror.

“I remember.” She shivered. He shifted from foot to foot, unsure of what to say now. Should he tell her about her glowing form when she exited the portal? Should he keep quiet? Was she injured, she had to be right? Should he call an ambulance?

“Don’t tell anyone about this.” Valerie said, cutting off his frantic thoughts.

“I- what?” He said, eloquently. Good job, Fenton.

“I said, don’t tell anyone. We don’t want to get in trouble, and my dad would freak if he found out what happened. Plus, I’m completely fine!” To illustrate this point, she got up and did a little spin. She almost fell over afterwards, but he didn’t point it out for fear for his life. “So  _ you _ won’t tell your family, or your loser friends, and I won’t tell anyone either, got it?”

“Loud and clear!” He said. He didn’t really get it, but oh well. He would hate to keep secrets from Sam and Tuck though…

“Promise me.” She commanded.

“I promise, geez!” He said, raising his hand up in the air. Oh crud he still had to tell her about the glowing ghost bit. “Actually Va-”

“I’m leaving now.”She announced, and immediately strided over to the front door.

“What? Valerie! We still have some stuff to talk about!” He called, chasing after her.

“No, we don’t.” She said, before slamming the door in his face. He froze. He still hadn’t told her about it. She had just left. What was he supposed to do now? Just carry on with his life like he hadn’t just watched someone die and then come back to life? Like heck they didn’t have anything to talk about! Like heck she was fine!

But what could he do about it? Nothing, that's what. He couldn’t stop her from doing anything, and if she didn’t want to talk to him, she wouldn’t. And there was nothing he could do.

He sank to his knees, shaking. It still hadn’t caught up with him. Not even in those few hours waiting for her to wake up, and not now. He was sure when everything settled in later, he would have one heck of a breakdown. But right now? He still had a life to live. And an impromptu traumatic experience wasn’t going to stop him. He sighed and stood up. Time to get started on that project Valerie was obviously going to ignore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You made it this far!  
> congratulations!  
> I'm happy to see you here, and I'd be even more happy to see you at the start of chapter 3!
> 
> Comments are my heart and soul and reading them is always my favorite part of any week!
> 
> so many exclamation points... I'm exhausting myself...


	3. Chapter 3

Danny was absolutely correct. Valerie was going to ignore it. She was going to ignore everything. Every single thing that had happened that day? Nope, didn’t happen. She was simply going to pretend none of it existed. She never went to the Fenton house, she never went downstairs, and she definitely hadn’t gone inside that big tunnel thing nope. Not her.

She had decided all of this on the way back to her own home. She had already made Fenton promise that he wouldn’t talk about it. Now all she had to do was not talk about it herself and everything should be good. There was nothing to talk about after all, nothing happened.

She sighed as she walked through the door to her house. That thing that definitely didn’t happen was exhausting.

“Welcome home Val! How was school? You went over to a classmates house to work on something right? How was that?” Her dad called from the kitchen. She could smell something delicious wafting over from that direction as well. Maybe she could pretend that she actually did go over to the Fenton’s house, for him.

“It was great dad.” She called back, before dashing upstairs. She didn’t want him to ask any more questions about things that did not happen.

She shook herself a little bit and settled at her desk chair. She might as well mess around on the internet for a bit until dinner was ready. She absent mindedly reached for the mouse to wake up the monitor. Her hand grasped nothing. She furrowed her brow and looked, her mouse was right there where it always was, so why hadn’t she grabbed it? She tried again and picked it up no problem. Maybe she was just still tired. Yeah, just tired.

Tired indeed. After only a few minutes of scrolling through social media she suddenly found herself sitting on the floor.

“Ow...” She whimpered, rubbing where she had hit the hard floor. Had she nodded off and fallen off her chair? She hadn’t thought she was  _ that  _ tired, but what other explanation did she have? She wasn’t one to spontaneously fall off a chair for no reason.

She rubbed her eyes and climbed back onto her chair. Anything to distract her from what hadn’t happened earlier. And what had just happened a few seconds ago…

NO nothing weird happened, she was just tired! Very tired!! That is all!

“Valerie! Dinner is ready!” her dad yelled from downstairs. She startled, and jumped what must have been a foot into the air.

“Um, coming dad!” She called. She took a few deep breaths, before walking carefully down the stairs.

Dinner was a slightly tense affair. Her dad could tell something was wrong, he always could ever since she was little, but he also knew that if she wanted to talk about it, she would, and that no amount of pushing would make anything better. And she didn’t want to talk about it, there was nothing to talk about anyway. Nothing at all. 

Byt the end all she wanted to do was go to sleep and just forget  _ everything. _ Of course nothing is that simple. Why can’t anything be that simple? Why??? Valerie wants to know. 

She woke up at 2 am when her blankets all fell off of her. The reason her blankets had fallen off? She was sleeping on the FLIPPIN CEILING. And gravity had reclaimed her blankets, while it apparently left her alone. She blinked rapidly, trying to make sense of what she was seeing. She had never seen her bed from the angle. Or the rest of her room for that matter. She shouldn’t be able to. She had to be dreaming. Yea, a dream, the most likely solution.

All she needed now was to get down so she could go to sleep and wake up properly this time.

Easier said than done.

The bed was pretty far away.

Just as she thought that, she fell. A short scream ripped itself from her throat as she fell, crashing into her soft mattress beneath. Well. that solves that problem. Time to sleep.

The next time she woke was actually because of her alarm this time. She wasn’t on the ceiling this time. No, this time, she was under the bed. Under it.

How did she get here?? She’s never been a sleepwalker so it couldn’t have been that… her mind wandered to the events of yesterday. The ones that didn’t happen. And just like that, she stops thinking about it. Time to ignore everything again.

She went through her morning routine on auto pilot, trying her hardest not to think about anything. Anything at all. Her dad had his concerned eyebrows on when he served her breakfast, and when he dropped her off. She felt something squirm in her gut when she saw it. It’s not like her to keep things from him.

She once again went through the motions of meeting up with the rest of the A listers, of going to her locker, of going to her first class, everything. She had a bad feeling about today.

She was having a hard time taking notes, she didn’t know why, only that she was having a hard time holding onto her pencil. There were also a few times where she fell a few inches to the ground out of nowhere, even if she hadn’t jumped in the first place.

She was more than a little freaked out.

She also had to deal with avoiding Fenton all day. She was sure he wanted to talk about what didn’t happen. She would not grant him the opportunity. Or maybe she would, after the most recent, and most glaringly obvious incident.

She had been alone- thank goodness- when she had  _ fallen through the floor into the basement. _ This was something even she could not deny was overly weird. Supernatural, even. Ok definitely supernatural. She was still pretty far in denial about everything that had been happening for the last 18 hours.

She wandered around the cold, dark basement, looking for a way out. She had never been down here before, and had gotten very lost. It gave her time to think however, and time to realize just how much she had been ignoring. The mouse? She hadn’t touched it because she  _ couldn’t  _ touch it. Just like her pencils or those shattered beakers in science. That dream about waking up on the ceiling? Probably not a dream at all. Those unconscious jumps? Same thing that made her wake up on the ceiling. And now she had slipped through an entire floor into someplace she should not be. 

She finally found a door. It was locked. Of course it was. Nothing is ever simple. She heaved another heavy sigh. She did actually need to talk to Fenton anyway. She pulled out her phone and opened up a fairly new contact, only created for the group project. Despite this she has many unread messages in it, all practically begging her to talk to him about the portal. She sighed again and texted him back.

Valerie

I’m stuck in the basement.

If you help me get out, we can talk.

Fenton

Really? 

I’m omw!

Valerie

Hurry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Your life just changed you're allowed to be in denial about it for a little bit. you know, until it actively impedes your old lifestyle. then you're going to have some problems.

**Author's Note:**

> You made it to the end! congratulations!  
> I'm honestly so happy you made it this far through whatever was above this. people reading stuff I wrote is the coolest feeling ever.
> 
> People who comment become my favorite people ever, so if you want that title, I would be happy to hear your thoughts!
> 
> see you next time!


End file.
